On the business side, it’s great to set up a check-in spot for your headquarters on Foursquare and Gowalla. There is little risk involved, and trends indicate that being present on these location-based services (LBS) will be beneficial to companies as proximity marketing gains momentum. (Proximity marketing: marketing that targets an audience based on their GPS location. Specifically in this case, through your mobile phone. We think this will be big.)

As a personal user, it can be fun to collect badges or prizes, to compete for mayorships, and just see where your friends have checked-in. There are risks, though. The tips below are helpful hints for minimizing risk on Foursquare and Gowalla, but they are by no means guarantees. The very nature of these platforms is to let people know precisely where you are, and there’s no absolute promise that only your friends will ever see that information.

If you accept those risks though, the tips below can help keep your information under your control.

1. Don’t become Foursquare or Gowalla friends with anyone you do not know. You might receive many requests from acquaintances, local figures, even from the newspaper or a nearby restaurant. You might know the owner of the restaurant, but do you know for a fact they are the ones reading the updates? When we suggest you only friend people you know on Foursquare, we mean a person (not a group) whom you literally do not mind knowing exactly where you are at any given moment. Just stop and think before you hit accept. This may mean you have 3 Foursquare friends, but truly, that’s better than total strangers knowing where you are.
2. Don’t “tell Twitter.” The second you push a check-in to Twitter, it’s public to the entire world. Hesitate even to let your friends on Facebook see that update. Unlike Facebook and Twitter, Foursquare still has some pretty solid bricks in its “walled garden,” but the second that information gets to other platforms, it is way more likely to become public.
3. Before you check-in, ask yourself this question, “If all the walled gardens fell and everyone could see everything, would anything really bad happen because of this check-in?” If not (and the cards usually seem to fall that way), go for it!

We hope you will sign up for Foursquare or Gowalla, because they’re wicked fun and they’re catching on. Leave comments with more tips to help people practice safe checking-in!

Now this isn’t the end-all-be-all list of Facebook Post Categories, but after some consideration, we think posts from businesses fall into one of the following ilks:

1. Horn-toots for the company.
2. Horn-toots for an employee or employees.
3. Horn-toots for clients, partners, or causes.
4. Links to information.
5. Requests for response.
6. Idle chatter.

Now, there is a time and place for horn-tooting. And there’s even more time and place for horn-tooting the merits of others, like local business, your clients, or the latest fundraising campaign. But how much is too much? Dominating your customers walls is not the goal, and certainly being absent is not good either. What is the right ratio of types of posts to frequency that will leave you with lots of impressions, but few hiders?

Unfortunately, there’s no way of knowing. Even assuming you are putting out a great ratio of self-promotion to outside-promotion and being an engager instead of yacker, it still depends on your audience. The number of times you appear on their wall varies by how much you post, of course, but also how many friends they have, how often they post, and whether or not they are set to “Top News” or “Most Recent.”

Then, of course, there is your content. How much meaty content can you reasonably expect to have in a given period of time? Is it better to only post good content, or post frequently enough to be a presence in the news feed?

Here’s the good news: you can ask. Ask your customers what they think of your content and your frequency. Ask them in person. Ask them on Facebook. Not only is this a great way to engage your clients, but it’s a great way to show that you care about their opinions. The fact of the matter is that everyone is constantly trying to adjust and update their social media presence. By it’s very nature, social media is ever-fluctuating, and so are the expectations. No one will hold it against you or think less of you for asking for advice on your strategy, because they’re probably in the same boat.

We’ll start. What do you think of our social media life?

We also have a clear impediment: an avatar is only 80 pixels by 80 pixels.

The design and layout of an avatar is usually simple work. Just upload a well-cropped photo of the person the avatar should symbolize. That doesn’t work for our company avatar, though, because the LunaWeb voice speaks for more than the person typing on Facebook, Twitter or this blog. This is the voice of the team speaking, and the avatar should show the team. But how do you represent all those people along with our iconic LunaWeb logo on the web equivalent of a postage stamp?

Well, we haven’t exactly figured that out yet. So far, we’ve been experimenting with the most literal representation of our employees, their faces.

In an attempt to avoid “floating heads,” we mocked this adaptation of our current avatar. Then with inverse colors.

And then the Brady Bunch version…which won’t really work because we have more than nine people. Alas, it is a difficult task, but it means a lot to us to get this right. All of LunaWeb is, and deserves to be, part of the public voice, and we hope our new avatar, whenever we finalize it, will be an accurate, albeit small, emblem of our collective voice.

If you have any creative layout ideas, shoot ‘em our way!

“They’ve pulled the carpet out from under your feet. They gave you an expectation of privacy. And they have reneged on that deal. They are in for some hot water. They are being viewed as a utility.”

If you Google “define utility,” the first result is a definition from Princeton: “a company that performs a public service; subject to government regulation.”

The Memphis-based Facebook Free Friday movement wasn’t the only backlash Facebook faced this weekend – QuitFacebookDay.com had 34,000 users committed to quit the social media site on Memorial Day, May 31. However, that’s 34,000 of 400 million users, a mere .0085%, and there’s no word yet on how many of them actually went through with it. The QuitFacebookDay fan page still has more than 7,000 members that evidently did not really intend to delete their accounts.

Like water, gas and electricity, people are finding they simply cannot walk away from Facebook. Many have tried to abandon their accounts only to return. Many more don’t even kid themselves by trying. Sure, we can survive without Facebook. We can survive without electricity, too, but do we want to? No. But the costs, distribution and regulations that allow us to enjoy electricity, and now  Facebook too, must be government regulated.

The new Facebook privacy controls are better, but still not totally comprehensive. For instance, the controversial “Pilot Program” is still opt-in, the opt-out check box is still buried in layers of settings, and it’s still unclear to the average user what in the world the Pilot Program even is.

Amid the din of users’ outcries, both Facebook and Google received letters from Representative John Conyers of Michigan demanding an explanation of their recent privacy violations. As the Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, Rep. Conyers is positioned to bring forth a hearing against the two groups and introduce legislation to regulate online privacy. It would appear that Facebook’s reluctance to operate under its members’ expectations will almost certainly result in legislative measures for controlling the utility of social media.

Take our friend, Mari Smith. Mari and I shared the stage at an unconference session on Facebook for Business in Seattle in 2007. We’ve both been blowing the Facebook horn ever since. Mari has educated and enriched so many people about the potentials of Facebook, and many of her fans are making realities of dreams. Anybody that’s ever spent more than a few moments with Mari sees Facebook in new and exciting ways. She’s also enlightened thousands on the merits of the feature that now leaves that bit of wisdom painfully empty to all but a small percentage (the Facebook affluent). Mari is a wonderful person. Solid, and she certainly would not treat people the way Facebook has. This conflict is why there is a deeper problem.

As a consultant, your clients are expecting you to know the best solutions from the best companies. You and your clients expect these companies to be morally compatible with you. There are a huge number of great people who consult and recommend Facebook. However, Facebook is tipping a moral scale. In order for consultants to continue to recommend Facebook, we will have to idealistically be divorced of Facebook. We will have to table Facebook as questionable while, for the time being, recommend Facebook while identifying the risk.

The risk in doing anything with Facebook is suddenly high. They’re a wild card.

This will hold true unless Facebook’s reputation becomes a liability instead of an asset. If we get to a point where people regard Facebook negatively, a business won’t want a Facebook badge on its website.

We want Facebook to get it together. Maybe you’d like to participate in a boycott next Friday, May 28 via Facebook Free Friday. Facebook is a great tool, but it can’t continue with these outrageous and repeated changes. Facebook’s story keeps repeating: “oh crap, we didn’t know this meant so much to you. Here, we’ll put this band-aid right here and make it feel better… because we care. Really.”

Do you feel Facebook is now high risk? Comfortable with Facebook?

facebook-privacy

Last week’s announcement that four NYU students were developing  a Facebook alternative suggests that they want its global dominance to shift: in the name of freedom. The students have more than raised their needed-for-development goal of $10,000 in 27 fewer days than scheduled.

But before the project, Diaspora*, is launched, we’ve found some articles that can be used in the meantime:

1) A timely article entitled “Facebook’s Gone Rogue; It’s Time for an Open Alternative” which discusses the viral, yet ambiguous, nature of its privacy laws, or lack thereof.

2) ReclaimPrivacy’s tool that allows users to scan their profiles for privacy intrusion.

3) Consumer Report’s Facebook rule of thumb: “7 Things to Stop Doing Now on Facebook”

4) SaveFace: A tool that allows users to reset most user settings back to “Friends Only.”

We aren’t against Facebook; we just want our privacy back.

Essential Plug-Ins for Wordpress – Joe Spake

Joe Spake’s TribeCamp presentation on essential WordPress plug-ins was more like a roundtable discussion and a swap-meet of best tips and practices. Joe demonstrated a few of his favorite plug-ins and then opened up the floor for suggestions from the group. Here’s what came out of that session:

Apture

This plug-in facilitates the addition of media to your posts by heading out and finding links, videos and photos for you. You type in search terms, it finds the items and will even plug in the appropriate Creative Commons attribution if necessary.

What Would Seth Godin Do

The consensus among the group on why it’s called what it’s called was “who the heck knows?”, but this plug-in allows you to create customizable text that will automatically appear for a user based on how many times they’ve been to your site. For example, the first time a user visits the site the message might be an initial welcome, whereas the second visit might offer a prompt to leave a comment or simply welcome them back and suggest a new feature on the site they might check out. The text is entirely customizable, so the possibilities are limitless.

Facebook Like

Though this might be old news now, the Facebook “Like” button is a simple plug-in, easy to install and allows users to like your posts, thus plugging links to your site into the user’s Facebook newsfeed. All a user has to do is click “like” as Facebook has so conditioned us to do, and your blog is linked in their Facebook profile. If another user clicks to find out more, it will take them to the content on the external site. The plug-in will automatically load this feature on all old posts.

WordPress Database Back-Up

This plug-in automatically backs up your entire WordPress blog to e-mail. The plug-in will e-mail the back-up to you in a .zip file each night. If you create a filter within your e-mail management system, you never even have to see the messages come through. They’ll automatically be dropped into a folder, but they’ll be there when you need them.

Special Text Boxes

Provides an easy way to do pull-quote boxes within a blog post without using any code.

LifeStream

Consolidates your social media all into one place.
One word of caution voiced by several participants in the discussion was to exercise care when installing plug-ins, because you can risk slowing down your load time. They will slow the load speed of your home page, even if you are not actively using all of them. Be sure to go through your site periodically and delete the ones you are not actually using to keep load speed as high as possible – search engines look for a fast load time so you want to keep things as streamlined as possible.

We’re calling that rule Step Zero.

Step Zero: If businesses become operative within social media without regard to their community, they become irresponsible and oppressive.

"Laptop Megaphone" by jj_pappas423 on Flickr

We’re aware of these boundaries in the real world: an overzealous sales associate who stalks each new customer with nonstop pleas for service:  “May I help you?” “Would you like to try that on?” “What are you looking for today?” A customer is likely to walk out of the store every time. But in terms of the web, it takes a different form: countless fan page requests, despite denial time and time again.  And then there’s the megaphone effect, when businesses use social profiles as a megaphone to broadcast their message, without actually participating in the community.

All other subsequent “laws” hinge upon this idea. We often forget that real world rules and courtesies apply within the web. Bombarding social profiles with requests and suggestions is no way to earn business. Once this intangible, invisible line is crossed, marketing efforts become oppressive.

People are generous to extend some level of accepting interruptions. By connecting with businesses online, customers are granting permission for marketing purposes, but don’t take advantage of this generosity. If business exceeds this level, the community will regard it as being socially irresponsible and insulting.

Writing for the Web – Elizabeth Cawein

DON’T DO THIS!!!!

Really, folks. Typing in all caps is just unnecessary and annoying, and makes people want to abandon your blog as fast as their mice can hit the Back button. But, short of that preference, Elizabeth Cawein’s “Writing for the Web” session was not dictatorial on grammar. After all, the less formal nature of blogs and some websites may lend themselves to run-on sentences, incomplete clauses, and maybe even the SELECTIVE use of all caps for emphasis.

The key, Elizabeth says, is to “establish a style and stick to it.” That might include choosing a particular style manual (like MLA or Chicago), but mainly it’s about your tone and topics. If you write a funny blog about your dog and sudden throw in a cooking post, people are gonna be scratching their heads.

Your style will also determine the proper length of your posts. Shorter is better in general, but depending on your content and how engaging it is, people might be willing to commit to a longer post. Even so, Elizabeth says she tries to keep her posts under 500 or so words.

Elizabeth also emphasized the importance of reading and then re-reading your post to check for misspellings and (unintentional) grammatical errors. Even if you’re writing in a lighter, fun style, there’s still no excuse for errors that make your post difficult to read.
Then, tag tag tag!

There are three concepts that describe a classic training development process:

Development to Delivery to Post-Episodic:

For each stage in that process, there are social tools available to make your task easier, and more efficient. Whichever tools you decide to use depends on you, and your clients.

We provided a handout (below) that categorizes different platforms available:

Development & Post-Episodic: Social Tools

Delivery: Social Tools

Miscellaneous Tools

• Professional Learning Networks: http://budurl.com/PLN4U
• Evolution of Training podcast: http://xyleme.com/podcasts

So what does all of this mean? Take the gun, leave the canola. With a plethora of social networking tools available, it is always best to choose what fits your needs best: You (training professionals) said that you use online learning to connect with other learners (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.) and also to directly share content (Delicious, SocialCast, WetPaint). With the conversation, we acknowledged how overwhelming it all is, but in 2010, also necessary. Identify your primary need. Pick a social tool and try it out.

And then we promised to better explain an RSS feed:

RSS in Plain English

The questions you asked:

1) What are your suggestions for content selection?

Answer:  Let’s refer to Betty White’s still-talked-about SNL debut. She referenced the way in which she was essentially recruited to SNL—via Facebook. And then she said “[Facebook] just looks like an incredible waste of time.” And of course she is right; Betty White is always right. But this problem can be remedied.

Dave’s response to the question was this: “The mundane stuff is the glue that maintains the connection.” The popularity of these social mediums indicates how they grow: one connection begets another.  The conversations we are used to holding face to face (f2f or “meat space”), are now displayed online and in public domains for everyone to see.  This constant presence is the appeal of social media: it is a perpetual status update. “What are you doing?” would never be asked if many didn’t want to know.

2) How do I engage my LinkedIn group members? (Or rather, how do I get activity from someone besides the moderator?)

Answer:  Your group will allow more than one moderator—use this tool. More moderators. More information. More activity. More participation can be induced with individual prodding. Stoke the fire. One of the biggest complaints about LinkedIn is that it is “too official.” We like to be flies on the wall, but are drawn to the flame the moment a question is asked that provokes us. Increase your chance for feedback by simply increasing your activity.

Become a fan of LunaWeb on Facebook.LunaWeb.com for helpful social tips right in your newsfeed.